In urban planning and aesthetic sense of architecture, the envelope of a building is a straight division between outside and inside and often takes a roll of a pure architectural expression. The facade itself is often just a canvas for architects and their creative drawings.

In a functional sense, the building envelope protects building interior from wind, rain, sunlight etc. The building envelope become more the outer skin of structure and takes complex climate-regulating functions, as thermal insulation, daylight, transparency, natural ventilation, interaction with environment, shading, texturing etc.

In line with increasing awareness about our non-renewable resources, polluting and increasingly costly energy production, the building envelope is pushed to the new roles and requirements, such as energy production, self-cleaning systems, water storage, cellular transportation and bio-filtration of air and water, self-shading systems or adaptation to changing environmental demands.

What is the role of local climate in building design? How does inputs buildings shape? Which parameters influence buildings shape!? Sun, wind, daylight, visibility…? How to define this parameters and simulate them? How to simulate and evaluate form? How to work with Evolutionary Solver inside Grasshopper3d? How to evaluate significant data and choose the fittest geometry? How to optimize geometry to increase overall energy efficiency of project!?

Results:

After successfully completition the workshop, students have gain a basic knowledge of energy optimization in building design process. Working on a plot of chosen city, students have designed energy optimized hyperbuilding with density of 10, 000 habitants per square kilometer. Comparing evolution of different urban structures, students now understand process and importance of energy optimized building envelope in initial phase of design process. In addition to that, they were introduced with form finding process with Evolutionary Algorithm combined with advanced simulation methods.

It was a such creative 4 days of workshop at University of Maribor with brilliant „students“ who are all themselves already successful professionals and teachers !

We established strong foundation for a „First Parametric Modelling Team“ in Maribor.